Wigandia's recent photos http://wigandia.smugmug.com/ William Martin is an artist whose ideas find their best expression in his garden. He explores the complex relationships between landscape, environment, culture and society in ways that eschew the all to frequently found traps that ensnare most who 'garden by design' - immitation, retrospectivity, plagiarism and denial of the spirit of place. His is a unique vision that owes everything to his creative imagination and his understanding of the disciplines of design: purpose, invention, innovation and manipulation of site, materials, and space to make an object that is both functional and beautiful. In his 'Wigandia' garden William has created a work that states most eloquently his insight into a thing so prosaic as a garden being elevated into a sense of place that is profound, powerful and subtle. Trevor Nottle. Author. (Adelaide, South Australia) One of Trevors great books 'Gardens of the Sun' http://www.hortulusaptus.com/gotstn.html WEBSITE under construction...... www.wigandia.com .Contact William for Garden Design/Consultancy and Construction Email. info@wigandia.com Telephone 0355925349 WEB Article Links http://www.bulletin.ninemsn.com/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/printing/FA6CE966398930A8CA256C7E007E1ACA http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/1999/archives/25/people_&_places/wigandia_garden http://www.sgaonline.org.au/forum/viewtopic.php?p=238&sid=4d02db84acfe40eaee4633b52163ea42 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/main.jhtml?xml=/gardening/2004/02/14/gtour14.xml&sSheet=/gardening/2004/02/14/ixgmain.htm Awards /Prizes 'Your Garden' Garden of the Year 1999 (Australia) Better Homes and Gardens 'Aussie' Garden of the Year 2002 (Australia) WIGANDIA By Leo Schofield. (Inside Out) William Martin is a self-confessed murderer. “I murder good taste”, he declares firmly. “I also murder clichés. And I’ve murdered quite a few plants in my time.” The crime scene, the place where he practices this extensive horticultural homicide, is a hillock near the hamlet of Mount Noorat in the western district of Victoria. Here Martin has created what is without doubt the most eclectic, exciting and original garden in the country. Wigandia, named after a species of flowering tree from Central South America, is also probably the first genuinely Australian garden, one free of alien influences, responsive to the local landscape, sensitive to climate (dry) and conditions (tough). Martin expands on this point. “My garden is about murder but it’s also about magic and the weather. This is a magical spot. I had to do something that was up to the place. I am also interested in sustainability. Not just the sustainability of plants but of culture as well.” He doesn’t use fertilisers. He uses very little water. Most of the built elements in the garden are constructed from recycled material. To chat with him for a while is to realise that Martin is not short of opinions. His pet hate is what he calls “silly inherited northern hemisphere garden traditions”, for which read ‘Pretty English Gardens’. Australia has been in thrall to the gardenesque since colonial days. We many not have opted for an Australian Republic but Martin has declared unilateral horticultural independence and others are beginning to share his beliefs and follow. Wigandia may just be the most influential garden of the next half century. To say that Martin started his garden from scratch is to give an old cliché new meaning. What he had to begin with in 1990 was a small plot of land on the top of a mountain of scoria from which he scratched and scrabbled a garden. But first he needed a house in which to life while he planted and dug, so be bought an outbuilding from Dalvui, one of the grand old properties of the area, dismantled it, conveyed the bits up to the top of his private mountain and re-assembled it. Then began the garden, an embodiment of all his current philosophies about plants and their uses. That this was the order of things is evident the minute one arrives to confront the cottage perched on the highest point of the hill with the garden falling away from it, tumbling downhill in a riot of unexpected forms and colours like bolts of rich cloth. This is dry country and only plants that thrive in these conditions are admitted. There is no soil to speak of, just red rocks of all sizes, spewed up aeons ago in volcanic eruptions. Thus the paths are red and rocky but there is no sense of aridity or sparseness, for they are bordered by astonishing, fearless planting. Thick grey cotyledon is used en masse. Less confident gardeners would use three or four plants. Martin has deployed maybe three hundred. Yes, he has roses, not many, and they sit alongside stiff cacti, furcreas, phormiums. There is no such thing as a dead spot in this garden. Every bend in a path reveals a surprise, most surprising of all being the plethora of ornament. Now when one thinks of one of Martin’s despised northern hemisphere gardens, on thinks of pedestals and plinths, of follies and grottos and ha ha’s and tempiettos, decorative elements interpolated for flamboyant or calming effect. Martin takes the mickey out of this grandiose tradition of ornament, creating his own versions from objets trouvés, a ‘temple’ and ‘pedestals’ made from corrugated iron, ‘urns’ formed from tin bathtubs or old coppers, ‘traditional trooughs’ that on close inspection turn out to be tin containers mounted on stiff-bristled industrial scrubbing brushes. More than one visitor has had the uneasy feeling that Martin is, as the old Aussie saying goes, ‘having a lend’ of them, that this is all a big pisstake. It is no such thing, of course. Wigandia,as the English editors of Gardens Illustrated realized when they showcased the garden in their magazine, is the triumphant product not only of an original mind but of a true artist – one thinks immediately of Rosalie Gascoigne’s assemblages of box ends and battered signs,or of the late American artist Joseph Cornell’s mysterious boxes. Like any serious artist, Martin considers his effects, applies his colour with a judicious combination of panache and restraint, studies form and contrast of texture. To lay visitors unacquainted with many of the plants, it will appear at least interesting, at best exciting. They’ll appreciate its larrikin qualities. Plantspersons will be agog at the variety of rare material he has used but also at the absolute appropriateness of every plant to its surroundings. It is perhaps only the garden conservatives who will be shocked and disapproving. Force-fed on pretty pictures of misty Pommy plantings, they will be unprepared for the robustness of colour, the vigor of forms that hit you like a cup of cold water in the face. This is not a pretty garden but it is a beautiful one, full of wit and fun. It could not have happened anywhere else but on the spot where it exists and from which its inspiration flowed, and no one else would have had the chutzpah to do it, the sensitivity to bring it off so completely. William Martin is known in the narrow world of gardeners as having firm views and the confidence to express them, no matter whose precious petals he ruffles. He is no wilting violet. And he knows how good he is. When I asked him how big his spread was, he replied “Two acres. But there are ideas enough in it to fill fifty acres.” ENDS http://www.smugmug.com/img/feed-icon.png Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:51:34 -0700 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:40:34 -0800 http://www.smugmug.com/ Copyright 2009, the copyright holder of each photograph. Some portions copyright SmugMug. All rights reserved. http://www.smugmug.com/img/smuggy64.gif Wigandia's recent photos http://wigandia.smugmug.com/